Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 1 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian CollectionCatlin, George
History
Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 1 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection
Catlin, George
England -- Description and travel; France -- Description and travel; Indians of North America
I was generally in the midst of a crowd, who were densely packed around
me; moving about the rooms whilst, with a rod in my hand to point
with, I was lecturing or answering the numerous questions which were
naturally put relative to these strange people and their modes. To
lecture or to explain all day, following the current of one's thoughts,
would have been a thing feasible, though fatiguing; but to stand upon
one's feet and all day long to answer to interrogations, and many of
those fifty times over, to different parties who were successively
taking me in tow, I soon found was far more fatiguing than my travels
and labours in the Indian wilderness; and I at length (at a much later
period than my friends and my physician advised) gradually withdrew
from the scene and this suicidal course, just before it might have been
too late to have saved anything useful of me.
I followed the advice of my physician by going to my rooms at stated
hours, but soon departed from it by failing to leave them with
punctuality, and take recreation in the open air. The partial change I
had adopted, however, was of advantage to me--talking part of the day
and breaking off and leaving my men to do the talking for the other
half.
Like most adventurers in wilderness life I was fond of describing
what I had seen; and, having the works of several years around me, in
their crude and unfinished condition, spread before the criticising
world, and difficult to be appreciated, I was doubly stimulated to be
in the collection, and with all the breath I could spare, to add to
the information which the visitors to my rooms were seeking for. Under
these conflicting feelings I struggled to keep away from my rooms, and
did so for a part of the day, and that, as I soon found, only to meet a
more numerous and impatient group when I re-entered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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